Football Canada Cup finals cancelled due to heavy smoke in Edmonton

Canada Cup football players moved indoors for a practice on Friday, July 14, due to heavy smoke over Edmonton. (File)

Thick smoke in the capital city put a stop to the Football Canada Cup finals in Edmonton this weekend. 

Football Canada made the announcement on Twitter Saturday night, saying it wasn't safe for athletes to play with the poor air quality. 

"I can't say we're not disappointed. We really got some curveballs this week that you just can't anticipate," said Tim Enger, executive director of Football Alberta.

The Canada Cup Medal games is a national tournament for the best high school-aged football players across Canada. Around 400 players, coaches and parents from eight provinces were in Edmonton to participate.

The smoky conditions weren't the first bump in the road for the cup.

The tournament was forced to pivot from public to private transportation over safety concerns after an incident at an Edmonton LRT station, a move Enger said would likely add thousands to the cost of the cup.

"We were pulling rabbits out of our hat all week," Enger said. "But we just finally couldn't, at the end of the day, overcome what came at us on Saturday with the smoke."

There were some alternative options, like using a smaller field at the Commonwealth Stadium Field House, but nothing Enger said worked for all the provinces involved.

Saturday morning, the decision was made to postpone the games in hopes the smoke might let up. In the meantime, four teams took advantage of the field house for a jamboree.

"Then we just crossed our fingers and waited it out as long as we could at Commonwealth for the bronze and the gold and it just didn't work out," Enger said.

Past cups have seen weather and injury-related delays, but nothing like the smoke, Enger said.

"This was excruciating," he said. "You can predict temperatures, you can see if there's going to be a blizzard and all this stuff.

"They're very good at predicting that. But smoke is the most fickle thing we've ever dealt with."

The organization will be looking at how to plan for poor air quality at future cups, he added.

"This is our world now," Enger said. "This is a situation where we're going to have some contingencies."

Some teams did get a chance for some football on Sunday, with second-string teams from western Canada competing in the Western Challenge.